Dimension #3: Emotion
It has a 100% population hit-rate
Of all the dimensions in FoFty’s six dimensional model of reality, Emotion is by far the most visceral - it is life expressed in rawest form possible.
All the information that is gathered through Perception from the Material world - however imperfect and incomplete - is fed into a central processing unit which is our brain, where the four remaining dimensions exist. This distinction is important because the sphere of control within our brain is internal, and the degree of control can have a wider variance, expanding as we move closer into the spiritual realm.
If you recall, the Material dimension is one that we cannot alter and we must abide by the rules of its operating system. Moreover, Perception, the next dimension, is largely static even if we have invented numerous devices to augment our bodies’ ability to perceive. As discussed earlier, the limiting agent to the augmentation is its connection to experience.
Emotion however is the first dimension we will discuss that is wholly encapsulated in our minds. They are generated in the amygdala, the part of our brain that is responsible for our “fight or flight” system. This system was critical during our evolutionary history as it governed our response to physical danger over many thousands of years.
Basically, the amygdala is a sophisticated pattern recognition engine, which has at times been associated with fear. In reality, it recognizes novelty - when something occurs that we are not expecting, the amygdala triggers the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) which then releases the stress hormones that we are all too familiar with.
More recently, the scope of danger has mutated from physical to psychological, and most of us today interact with our amygdalae through the Perception of psychological threats.
There is even a term called the “amygdala hijack” which describes the situation where our body responds to psychological stress by releasing hormones that force us into a fight or flight response. Anger, aggression, fear, and stress are emotional triggers generated by the amygdala which causes our adrenal glands to secrete cortisol or adrenaline causing the following biological responses:
increased in blood flow to muscles
expansion of airways
increase in blood sugar
dilation of pupils
These changes translate in the experiences that we are all too familiar with:
rapid heartbeat
sweaty palms
clammy skin
goosebumps
Left unchecked, amygdala hijacks can result in irrational behavior and poor decision making that we end up regretting later. This is a case where the intersection of biological and mental facilities that have been hardwired over a long period of time is changing rapidly due to civilization’s advancements as we are not hunter-gatherers in the wilderness anymore. The ramifications are still being sorted out.
While we cannot directly control our amygdala and our biological programming, we can influence its impact in various ways by managing triggers, reasoning, and practicing mindfulness. Meditation for example is an ancient practice that to this day continues to empower people to an elevated state. Whether you are a Tibetan monk or a hedge fund billionaire like Ray Dalio, the disciplined practice of meditation serves as a powerful antidote to emotional hijacks, and can help place oneself in control over our bodies. The concept of mind over body reappears in earnest when we discuss Will, the fifth dimension.
At this point, we should clarify the distinction between emotions and feelings. The former is more physical, while the latter is more mental:
One interesting and very important characteristic about emotions is the profound influence it has on our cognitive processes, which is why we are discussing it sequentially before the Cognition dimension. Our attention, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and memory are greatly impacted by our emotions - either as a multiplier or a minimizer.
For example, science has established that emotional events are remembered more clearly, accurately and for longer periods of time due to the integration of our cognitive and emotional neural networks. When we take a snapshot of our reality and store it in our memory banks within our hippocampus, emotions sear them in for recall later on. These are called “flashbulb” memories.
What we have learned is that the amygdala plays a significant role in our prediction engine. It turns out that our brain continuously predicts what will happen in reality, by about a few hundred milliseconds before it happens. This affords us time to take action in case action is needed. Our prediction engine is extremely complex and it is built on our previous experiences. It constantly and continuously adapts with new information in an infinite feedback loop.
The amygdala’s role is to compare our prediction with what actually happened in reality. If reality matches our predictions, then there is no update needed to the system as the prediction was accurate. This is what happens when we meditate calmly in a quiet room or when we walk down a street and nothing unexpected happens.
When reality diverges from the prediction, the amygdala forces attention to the anomaly - causing our eyes, heads, and even bodies to turn. At this point, new memories are activated and filed away for future consumption by the prediction engine. If the divergence is large - possibly life threatening - the memory is filed into a different storage unit in “high definition.”
If you’ve ever been in a life-threatening situation, or experienced anything that was wildly unexpected such as the 9/11 attack, your memories of those events will likely be vivid. In today’s modern world, divergences from expectations are increasingly more social, unlike most of the situations in our ancestors’ lives during prehistoric times.
Thus memory and emotions are closely intertwined, and the important fact here is that memories - including subconscious or implicit memories - are significant triggers of our emotions. Our fight or flight system continues to adapt to psychological factors, leveraging our memories as fissile material responsible for much of our emotions.
We are not doomed to be slaves to our amygdala, nor should it hold our memories in ransomware. While we may not be able to control our physiological reactions resulting from hormones and other chemicals being released by our SNS, the result from our feelings and experiences can be managed and controlled by our minds.
This sets the stage for Cognition, the next dimension and the one that we are most familiar with: our thoughts.
➡️ Watch the accompanying YouTube video for this article here:
➡️ Read the previous FoFty manuscript article here:
About Sang: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangyshin